The City of Clarksville, Tennessee has chosen World Wide Packets’ (News - Alert) Carrier Ethernet solution in order to build a city-wide FTTH network for delivering residential, business and transport services, according to a World Wide Packets announcement. The company's LightningEdge Carrier Ethernet solution will be implemented by the Clarksville Dept. of Electricity to connect residents and businesses to its electrical utility. The resulting "Broadband Community" is expected to encourage economic growth and improve quality of life. The network will reduce Department of Electricity operating costs and allow the delivery of new, revenue generating quad-play (video, voice, data, and mobility) broadband services.

 

"Our ultimate goal is to serve the current and future residents of Clarksville by building healthy economic growth across the region. To accomplish this, we recognized an opportunity to implement an FTTH network that would allow us to streamline services while lowering overall operational costs," said Ken Spradlin, president of Clarksville’s Department of Electricity. "We've worked with World Wide Packets in the past and their Carrier Ethernet products were proven in our environment. Additionally, they are the only vendor whose products can scale to deliver the breadth of new services we have planned for our subscribers - services that will improve citizens' quality of life as well as stimulate business and residential growth."

 

World Wide Packets was picked by Clarksville thanks to the company's proven ability to deliver Carrier Ethernet for Business Services (CEBS), Carrier Ethernet for Residential Services (CERS) and Carrier Ethernet for Transport Services (CETS).

Clarksville's electric utility receives nearly 130,000 meter orders each year. Currently, every order requires a technician to go onsite to read meters, make connections and manage outages. The new World Wide Packets network will permit the city to manage nearly all of these requests remotely, thus both providing an unprecedented level of customer service and also reducing costs.

Clarksville will now be able to leverage its FTTH network to offer its citizens a wide array of advanced, revenue generating services such as VoD, IPTV (News - Alert), high-speed Internet access, and VoIP. The Clarksville FTTH network is expected to be the most comprehensive in the region. It is expected, in turn, to attract new residents and new businesses to the City.

Clarksville plans to use a billing service that enables customers to pre-pay for services by purchasing them in more convenient, smaller increments. The easy-to-use and flexible options for residents s is expected to even further improve Clarksville’s already near-perfect customer satisfaction ratings.

Brian Solomon is a Web Editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To see more of his articles, please visit Brian Solomon’s columnist page.